Stout Fences

“They were testing the fences for weaknesses systematically.” --- Robert Muldoon, Jurassic Park

I cannot help but think that there is something savage and carnivorous in us all that requires us to be hemmed in by stout fences. It doesn’t require much introspection to imagine the possible destruction I could bring on myself and others if my baser inclinations were allowed to run free. But even now the use of free in this instance is a lie. The phrase should run more like if my baser inclinations were set loose…sounds more like the releasing of an animal and would be more accurate.

We live in a culture that cries freedom but has only really cried let us be animals. Ours is a degenerate, base freedom that has grown only to mean lack of restraint. Our culture has tested the fences for weaknesses systematically and has breached the barrier that long held us back from the destruction that must come when men become beasts.

The beasts ripped a gaping hole in the fence of Marriage. Men and women in search of freedom dashed to pieces the idea that sacred vows are just that, sacred and inviolable bonds that can only safely be severed by death. For the freedom of sex with anyone and everyone, they dashed to pieces the idea that being constant and true are of greater worth than the treacherous pleasure of adultery. Destroy this fence and be free…. to wreck and maim countless lives, especially those of your children.

Having started down that road and destroyed the image of the sacred, absurdity and rabid insanity rush to pull up the posts and throw down the rails still standing. The sacred image and symbol of marriage that adultery defiles would be corrupted utterly through the ultimate perversion of same sex “marriage”. The fence once breached is the more easily destroyed in the name of freedom… the freedom to be absurdly less than even animals and defy the very nature of anatomy. And lives are destroyed and lies masquerade as truth.

We are so free now that we can destroy with impunity the weak and the helpless who prove to be inconvenient impediments to our freedoms. We are now so free that for years without interruption a man in Philadelphia can slaughter children by the thousands, get rich doing it and the silence is deafening. Animals have been known to eat their own young.

In so many places the fences lie in ruin and the velociraptors are free. Cultural destruction at the hands of free animals is inevitable… unless the men who are left hem us in again with stout fences. 

A Ruined Routine

Routine gives us security. For instance, the alarm goes off on my IPhone every morning of the work week at 5:00 am. I do the double click click and go back to sleep. Five minutes later I am double click clicking and trying to make up my mind if I really have to pee bad enough to get up right that minute. Five minutes later I am up and in the bathroom staring at the toilet bowl from on high, ---not the up close college stare. I let the dog out, start the coffee and jump in the shower. I brush my teeth first, lather up head to toe next, and then break out the razor to tidy up the beard outline. The curtain is pulled back from the right side; I grab my towel, close the curtain to dry off, then pull the curtain all the way back from right to left and step out. Any deviation from this routine can send the whole morning spiraling out of control. Routine is good.

Many mornings I stop at the rural Shell station just down the road from me. I park in the same spot most days, walk in, get my Diet Pepsi and ask for a sausage-egg-and cheese biscuit from the guy who has been working mornings forever. Our relationship represents the perfect world of mindless transactions. I ask for the biscuit almost every day; he walks over to the warmer, deftly plucks me a biscuit from the mass of biscuits with his shiny tongs, and plops it down on the counter and every morning, promptly asks me if I would like a sack, to which I reply every morning “No.” I swipe my card and every morning he asks me, “Debit or credit?” to which, every morning, I reply, “credit.”

This scene was played out every morning for several months with no mishaps, no prying questions about me, my family or my health, and certainly no feigned wishing me a great day. I came I bought I left. He could care less about me and my day. It was a nice arrangement. Then one morning all that changed.

The day started as usual, and I arrived at the usual time and the usual spot at my rural Shell station. I walked in, got my Diet Pepsi and came face to face with New Guy. He didn’t look like my Old Guy---a balding, frumpy fellow with an 8 o’clock shadow whose sparse hair was always disheveled and who had a haggard hang dog look most mornings.He had to be in his mid-thirties going on old. No, New Guy looked crisp. A thick head full of black, I suspect Persian, hair neatly combed and slick to the eye. His dark, bright eyes peeped out from behind his not unstylish glasses and his broad mouth peeled open to dazzling white teeth and the words, “Good Morning.”

The whole incident startled me. My routine appeared in jeopardy. I asked for my usual sausage-egg-and cheese biscuit. New Guy’s movement to the warmer seemed sure and practiced. He slid back the rear glass deftly but then haltingly took the tongs in hand. He repeated again what kind of biscuit I had requested and I concurred. He nervously clicked the tongs together and peered in amongst the biscuits like a clerk at Petco trying to decide which Neon Tetra to nab. He nervously clicked his tongs again and then started lifting every biscuit under the hot lights and looking at their undersides like he was trying to pick out a male kitten. After a considerable number of misfires, he settled on the biscuit with the right look and marched it over to the register.

 Without asking my druthers, New Guy commenced the painful task of rubbing open the plastic sack that I was apparently required to take along. His thumb and pointer finger couldn’t manage the task, so an application of saliva to the finger tips made the operation possible and my biscuit and Diet Pepsi were bagged as I swiped my card. I derived some security from the inevitable “Debit or Credit” utterance but that small comfort was destroyed with the beneficent benediction of “Have a good day, sir” being flung at my back.

I crawled in the truck depressed and out of sorts at such a bad start to the day and drove under a cloud all the way to work. Perhaps my Old Guy was just sick. Tomorrow’s a new day I told myself. But it wasn’t. 

For weeks now New Guy has been picking out my sausage-egg- and cheese kitten, forcing me to take a sack and flashing that dazzlingly bright smile of his. I suppose this is to be my New Normal. But, it is maddening that on those days when I lather up first and brush my teeth second and let the dog make the coffee and start my day out all wrong that I can’t just hustle in for my Diet Pepsi and biscuit. No, I have to wait for the search and wait for the bag and feel the weight of “Have a good day, sir” cast on my hurried back. But it is a routine…I guess. 

Hold the Fort

My sweet wife just asked me why she has to have a child who needs so much help on school work. I didn’t answer. I know her heart.

She wasn't faulting our kid or lamenting having a child with a learning need. Neither of us would trade Caleb for some genetically altered picture of human perfection. She was asking a question with deeper roots: Why is life so full of toil and vexation? Oh, she knows the answer. We both know the theology of the Fall of Man. What we struggle with is the accumulated weight of that Fall, the weight that bears down on us from every angle all the time with never a reprieve. Or so it seems. Heather speaks as a battle scarred mother who has lost a son to cancer after a long, loosing fight. I heard her words not as a complaint but as a plea, a plea for the rest promised in Christ.

Living makes us weary, and for the life of me I cannot see how anyone can look at this world and not see the weight looming over all creation slowly grinding all things down. What fool can look out their window at the world and glory in the progress of Man? Where is the upward climb from the primordial sludge? I look out and see a rapidly accelerating slide back to that sludge. Since we will not return to our real origins as image bearers of the Most High God, we return to the ones we fabricated. We reduce ourselves to single celled filth dwellers and wonder why we live in a world of filth.

But what to do for now, until Christ returns or calls us home? We do like Paul and pour ourselves out like drink offerings for those who need us and by so doing we pour ourselves out to Jesus. When Heather slaves with our son over the math that he just can’t seem to get, she does something eternal. She is pouring herself into another, someone weaker, someone who needs her just as much as she needs Christ. She wears herself out once again--- at a good thing --- and grows weary.

Scripture commands us not to be weary in well doing, but does it command us not to be weary of having to do well? It strikes me that on some level we should be weary of this sin cursed world and long for another. But like good soldiers, we are called to fight on, weary as we may be, knowing that where and while we fight the weight of this world is pressed back and hope springs anew. The rest of Jesus is coming. We just need to hold our forts. 

Salute to Hot Biscuits

I just recently rediscovered the power of biscuits. The other evening I came in from the cold, dark, dampness of winter to be greeted by a cookie sheet bejeweled with golden brown goodness. Honestly it was a nostalgic moment as I wedged my butter knife into their flaky middles and gently pried upward in an attempt to get the perfect proportion of top to bottom. Then I sliced off a pat of butter, a generous pat, pinched its slippery sides with my fingers and tucked it between the two halves. Then I repeated the whole process for every biscuit on the sheet.

Biscuits and Karo syrup will forever represent all that is really good in the world to the little kid in me. Biscuits mean security. Biscuits mean Granny Lou and Aunt Motel and Aunt Lucille. Their homes were places I could go and stay a week or even two and never miss home. At their homes there were always biscuits, iron skillets, and the sliding of iron cookware on oven racks followed and the warm thump of oven doors closing. I don’t ever recall worrying about anything at their homes, except maybe if there might not be enough chocolate gravy for my second pair of biscuits.

Growing up so often ruins appreciation. I think I had forgotten the beauty of hot biscuits. So that night, to honor the biscuit, the ladies who made them for me, and the security of warm places, now and from my childhood, I ate three, butter laden, Karo sodden, perfectly parted symbols of warmth and security. And toasted their perfection with a tall glass of cold milk. Sometimes it’s good to be  a kid again.   

Honey Defies Physics

Honey defies physics. But it’s not just honey; it’s syrup and sorghum too. For that matter it is anything sticky and edible that a body might wish to keep contained in its container. Just last night I got so aggravated at the honey jar I would have thrown it against the wall….but it was sticking to my fingers.

 It was all sticky on the outside, and it had left its sticky circular foot print on the shelf, and it stuck all over my fingers, and I can’t stand sticky fingers. I ran the hot water and rinsed the outside of the jar off and swabbed off the shelf with a wet rag. Then I got out the “honey spoon” we got somewhere in Arkansas. It’s made out of cherry wood and has a flat end with a honey comb pattern cut in it. It is definitely a cool “spoon.” I dipped it in the honey, twirled the spoon about to keep the sticky goodness in its place and popped it in my mouth. Good stuff. I then rinsed the spoon clean, set the honey jar on the window seal above the sink and went on about my business.

I returned just a little while later for another small smackeral only to find the jar STICKY again and the tell-tale sticky foot print back, but this time on the previously clean window seal. Honey obviously is no respecter of glass. It respects the stupid plastic bear even less. How does it pass through solid materials to the other side and set up shop?

Sorghum does the same thing. There is no pancake syrup that a chubby glass or plastic woman can keep hemmed up for long. Karo has never seen a bottle it could not thwart with its sticky goodness. And chocolate syrup refuses to recognize its place.

Right now in our pantry four containers of sticky edibles have gripped their shelf with sugary toes and have to be wrenched loose in order to be pressed into service. I would clean the shelf, but why bother….. the laws of physics won’t apply this time either. 

Green Rubber Knee Boots

Nothing screamed freedom for me as a kid like green rubber knee boots. Each winter meant new boots for me and my little brother. Sometimes they were Christmas presents, but more often they were simply necessities of two boys who took their job of getting dirty very seriously and whose feet were apparently steeped in fertilizer each night.

Sometimes we would go with our folks to pick them right off the shelf at the store. These generally stood straight and proud on metal shelves with a little forward lean to them giving the boots an air of slightly bowing soldiers ready for service. They came shackled together with a length of thin white cord or perhaps a plastic thread. Depending on the model, they would sport long yellow laces all the way up the front and a strip of yellow rubber around the top. Sometimes we got the plain slip on kind with no laces, but I found that I loved the lace up version better.

I loved threading those laces in and out and in and out and then cinching them down tight at the top to lock the legs of my overalls or jeans in place and make that puffy denim billow at the knee. You couldn’t maintain the billowy effect with the slip on kind, so you couldn’t look like a British soldier for very long with those. The only drawback to the laces was that over time the plastic tip would get worn off and then the laces would fray, then threading them through the eyes got to be a chore, and then the cockleburs would grab hold of the ends and make a spiky wad or maybe the beggar lice would gang up on the ends. Either way pulling the laces back through the eyes required some picking and pulling at the end of the day.

Getting boots at the store was nice, but nothing was better than getting boots in a box and even better was if they were wrapped up. Rubber knee boot boxes are big. They are wide. They can double as a lap desk. And the best ones have the hinged lid and open like a treasure chest. I can still remember several Christmases setting a wonderfully wide box with faint traces of vulcanized rubber seeping through the bright Christmas paper on my lap and waiting for the command for me and my brother to open them together. Of course we knew what was inside. We knew the weight distribution of heavy on both ends but light on the sides meant new boots hiding in the cardboard treasure chest. Sometimes a big sticker with a picture of the boots greeted us from under the shredded Christmas paper. But every time, raising the lid meant that a sweet rush of rubbery goodness filled the air.  Then you had to fold back that sheet of packing  paper and maybe pull the cardboard inserts out before you could try them on. And by all means get the wad of paper out of the toe.

I loved the slick inside. I loved wiggling my toes around all the space in the toe. There was always space in the toe, plenty of space for growing feet. Just had to wear more socks. Then came the requisite walk around the room and up and down the hall, booming along on the wood floor. But best of all was the bang of the back door, the clumping down steps and the heavy, thunderous thunk, thunk, thunking across the yard to the nearest mud hole. And freedom. 

The Power of Place

Grandma Connie died this summer at 102. Truth is I had stayed away from that side of the family, my dad’s side, for a long time. The whole thing was a colossal mess, the classic saga of a shattered American family. Started by teenage passion and destroyed by alcohol fueled immaturity and selfishness. My parents married in their teens and divorced in their twenties. My dad showed up occasionally, made promises with breath heavy with beer, and then left again. A gross, ridiculous, misunderstanding played out with my older brother living with my dad and being raised by my Grandma Connie and Granddaddy Bilbo.  

When we got older, my brother would come pick my younger brother and me up and take us to Grandma Connie’s. All too often my dad showed up drunk, wanted to fight somebody, or worse yet wanted to pull a gun and kill somebody. As the years went by I just had to distance myself from them all.  The trajectory of my life just couldn’t include drunken brawls, unhinged anger, and the violation of every game and fish law on the books. So I just stayed away.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t, primarily because of Grandma. I could sit and listen to her for hours, just sip on that instant coffee she always drank and listen. But during those years I had battles to fight of my own, and my emotional capital just wasn’t sufficient to spend any on gun fights and drunken rants from my father.

Then came the drive down for her funeral. I found myself on back roads passing just barely familiar land marks and grappling with memories welling up from deep down inside, stirring a longing for this place. I am not even sure they could rightly be called memories. They were more like emotionally charged impressions, nothing visually vivid, a series of blurred black and white slides projected on a wobbley screen. More visceral, internal, deeper than memory, more like my very marrow. My genes had their origin in the soil of this Mississippi county, and they longed to be here, to return to their native element. I felt free in my place.

 I am convinced the Bible is right; we are of the soil and the soil of our places matter. They speak to our bones. Two weeks after Grandma Connie’s funeral I was back with my son Caleb, to introduce him to my native soil. We went out to her house at the end of County Road 125, the very end. There was no going beyond Grandma’s house. It was the inevitable destination of County Road 125. 

She had always been a gardener, always growing things. Only now the growing things were left behind all round her house, but as if in some last, wildly fertile good-bye the pear trees heavy with fruit bowed their branches to the ground taking on the curve of a weeping willow more than a pear tree. The apples followed the pears' example. My son and I walked around the house amazed at the bounty, pears, apples, grapes and figs. Tomatoes in the vegetable patch flushed varying hues of red like mottled cheeked mourners, spent and aggravated by too many tears. The place seemed to salute her years of stewardship and mourn her passing at the same time.

I mourned too. I lamented the time I could have spent sitting with her taking in her wisdom. I mourned the relationship my children had missed. I missed my history. I missed the place. But now at least my bones could hear again.